THE REFUGEES NEXT DOOR

Maybe what they saw would help them understand problems faced by a growing number of refugees in Lake Highlands schools, Saw says.

The women visited the Mae La refugee camp where Saw grew up. The camp is surrounded by gates and barbed wire. About 40,000 people live there; pigs and chickens running wild eventually serve as food.

Most refugees stay in the camp because it’s their only opportunity to obtain an education for their children.

“The trip really opened my eyes to my students’ life experiences before they walk into Wallace,” teacher Ashley Nick says.

“The kids [in the camps] are happy. Their life is very simple. Do they have all the things that we have? Absolutely not. They don’t have electricity. They don’t have running water. They don’t have flushing toilets. They don’t have a lot of materials in the schools. It’s just different,” Yarger says.

Carmen Casamayor-Ryan, who oversees Richardson ISD’s Newcomer Center that helps refugees adapt to new surroundings, says stories like this help personalize the hot-button issues of immigration and refugee resettlement.

“Every day here, you connect with them, and you are in awe,” she says. “I have the filter of good experience every time I hear a negative news story.”

At

More Than Stats

Refugee resettlement in the United States and Texas, by and large, is unprecedented and contentious.

“We are witnessing the highest levels of displacement on record,” states the United Nations Refugee Agency. The White House plans to accept 110,000 refugees from around the world in fiscal 2017 — that’s 30 percent more than 2016’s 70,000.

Texas from October 2015 to October 2016 resettled more than 7,200 refugees, according to federal records.

Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings has said Dallas will embrace refugees, while Texas Governor Greg Abbott promised to withdraw our state from the United Nations Refugee Resettlement program.

Federal officials have responded that refugees, who undergo stringent security screenings, will continue to resettle in Texas through federal programs.

Maybe you align with the openarms style of Rawlings or side with Abbott’s plan to prevent refuge in our state. Perhaps you fall somewhere in the middle, or just don’t know anymore.

But your status as a Lake Highlands resident means odds are good that the matter is neither obscure nor remote — for us, refugees and asylum seekers have familiar faces and names.

You probably work, study, worship, volunteer alongside or send your children to school with those who have fled Burma, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Ethiopia, Venezuela, El Salvador and other war-, povertyand violence-embroiled countries.

This month, meet some of these refugees, and learn about what brought them to the United States and how people in our neighborhood are helping them chart a new life.